Microsoft has announced the Microsoft Dragon Copilot. This is, among other things, a healthcare AI system that allows you to listen and create notes based on clinical visits. The system combines voice instructions created by AI Voice Company Nuance, purchased by Microsoft in 2021, with surrounding listening technology.
According to an announcement from Microsoft, the new system will help users streamline documents through features such as “multi-language ambient notes” and natural language dictation. Its AI assistant provides the ability to automate tasks such as “generic medical information search from trusted content sources” and “conversation orders, notes and clinical evidence summary, referral characters, post-visit summary.”
All of this goal is to “free clinicians from much of the administrative burden of health care,” which can focus on patient care, according to Joe Petro, Microsoft VP of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences solutions and platforms. According to Microsoft, a clinician using Nuance Tech, which makes up the Dragon Copilot, reduced burnout, with 93% of patients reporting “a better overall experience.”
Microsoft is one of many companies that provide such AI tools for healthcare settings. The Google Cloud blog, published today, highlights how it uses Google's medical AI products, including creating medical assistant AI agents to identify health risks for patients. It also uses a new multimodal image search feature that Google debuted in Vertex AI search for healthcare products.
Last year, the FDA published considerations for healthcare generation AI devices. There, not only was there a number of potential benefits of technology, but the risk that the model would make up things was recognized. In a study last year, researchers found it was sometimes a problem with Nambla's Openai Whisper-powered medical transcription software. Microsoft says it is “committed to developing responsible AI through design,” and Dragon Copilot's “built on secure data real estate and incorporates healthcare-specific clinical, chat and compliance protection measures for accurate and secure AI output.”
